WHAT SCIENCE AND SUPER-ACHIEVERS TEACH US ABOUT HUMAN POTENTIAL

The book

The author

David Shenk is the national bestselling author of five previous books, including The Forgetting ("remarkable" - Los Angeles Times), Data Smog ("indispensable" - New York Times), and The Immortal Game ("superb" - Wall Street Journal). He is a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com, and has contributed to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, Gourmet, Harper's, The New Yorker, NPR, and PBS.

February 28, 2007

Labels and limits

Maia Szalavitz has an interesting piece in yesterday's Washington Post about the national mania for diagnosing kids:

"Increasing numbers of children are given increasingly specific labels,
ranging from psychiatric and neurological diagnoses such as Asperger's
and attention-deficit disorder to educational descriptors including
"gifted" and "learning disabled."

-- The main problem being that these labels tend to overwhelm parent, child and teacher with a fixed and false set of expectations. She cites Stanford's Carol Dweck, author Alissa Quart and psychiatrist Bruce Perry all insisting that abilities are not fixed.

"Recent research in
neuroscience bolsters the idea that people can and do change. Says
Perry: 'The brain is like a muscle: The areas that are used grow and
improve while those which aren't, don't.'"

Kids diagnosed with a disability need to understand that there are no fixed limits on what they can achieve. "It's incumbent on parents," says Dweck, "to explain that 'Well, you may be
wired a little differently; this might make it more difficult for you;
you might have to work harder and use different strategies,' as opposed
to 'This means you can't learn.' "

And at the other end of the spectrum, kids labeled as "gifted" need to understand that success will only come with effort and a willingness to take risks. "Children who believe
in permanent traits like fixed intelligence," Dweck explains, "are actually vulnerable
because when something goes wrong they think they don't deserve the
label anymore."

Mark Woodman is trying to help his son who has a Sensory Processing Disorder by recalibrating his brain. Inspired by Scott Adams (dilbertblog) he's convinced that so called "brain hacks" is the best way to help Caleb.